Sunday, October 7, 2012

What A Way To Cab The Night Off

After not clubbing for a while, I finally went out again last night :) and yes it was pretty fun! The night actually capped off with the club playing gangnam style… would you believe it? A club down under playing gangnam, and the boys were loving it, Asians and Caucasians alike.

O-oo-O -Ooppa Gangnam Style!

Seeing that it was getting late, and with the losing of an hour because the clock turns ahead for Daylight-Saving, I decided to finally end my night of 3-Bs… Boys, Booze and Body shaking (that’s what everyone was doing… not actually dancing, lol) to hitch a cab home. And boy oh boy, I had one of the most interesting conversations with the cabbie driver.

I gotta get me one of these!

I started off politely telling him where I wanted to go and continued to ask him how his night was. And he said it was not as busy as he’d like, but he knew he’d always get customers if he waited outside the gay bar. And so I replied saying yea, that is true, we like to party :)

“Yea gay guys like to party, and they have all the money to spend partying… No need worry about wife and kids, so very good. I telling my wife, next life no more born as straight!”

And I thought, wow… okay cool… Then he went on…

“but all the party happen when young, when they get old, they know it no good. No wife and No children… that when they know problem”

(pardon the English, but I think he was an Italian migrant and that was the way he spoke)

I thought okay whatever, I don’t really need to continue this conversation. Everyone is entitled to what he or she thinks. BUT, he then repeats the same thing again, about how when gay guys grow old they regret, and that some of his taxi customers tell him that.

So being the good gay that I was, I thought it was time to defend the community a bit, and I said

“Well that’s why gay people lobby for same-sex marriage, so that we can grow old with the people we love, but straight people don’t like that do they? They want to stop gay people from getting married with the people they love”

I was thinking to myself, way to go Lucas, get the stupid cabbie!

The conversation could have ended there, but no… it went on…

“if they want to get marriage, maybe it okay, but when they want to hav children then it is a problem because children need mommy and daddy”

WTF?

When I heard that, I almost burst a blood vessel, partly because of the promoted hemoglobin flow from the alcohol, but also mostly because of how ignorant this cabbie was. Once again, being the good gay that I am, I could not possibly have let that rest and slept properly that night (or morning).

“Are you saying that 2 fathers or 2 mothers cannot possibly raise a child properly? That a family must surely have a father and a mother? (he answers with an affirmation) So then the state and the government then has a right to remove children from single moms and dads because it is not a proper family, is that what you are trying to say?”

Silence… I was thinking, score Lucas! Homos-1, Breeders -0

Then he says

“Yes but before divorce as single parent, they have proper family so that is okay. 2 men and 2 women cannot have child in first place, so not okay.”

I believe had I accepted the offer of the last tequila shot at the bar; I’d have burst my second blood vessel of the night. So then I retorted by saying that, yes but after divorce they are worse than a gay couple, because they only have one parent, so then again it must be the states responsibility to take the child away from the single parent. Silence from him. Then I went on to say that, gay couples do end up adopting as well and so all of that has the potential to solve the orphan problems in a lot of communities. Once again no reply from him…

And then he finally said that “no government can take child away from single parent", and that, "that would be wrong”

But apart from that he had nothing else to say. Thankfully I arrived at my stop after that. So I politely said to him

“Everyone is entitled to their own views, but if your view is in anyway hypocritical or biased, then please do not try to impose it on others. If single parents are good enough to raise a child, then a gay or lesbian couple would be just as good if not twice as good.”

I further urged him not to only see things from one point of view, and to have a good night. His lack of reply after my soapbox lines either meant that I have managed to enlighten him a bit; or that his cabbie instincts kicked in and reminded him that he should never start an argument with the customers.